With the season coming to an end at the hands of the Detroit Tigers, it’s time to start looking towards the 2025 season. With a long list of players leaving next season, it’s time for teams to start thinking about what to do with their rosters. Who are they going to spend their money on and who do they have to let go?
In 2024, the Houston Astros finished the year with the third-highest payroll in baseball behind the New York Mets and New York Yankees, but they have more reserves than any other team, and only one team will remain in 2025. It was less than 10%. Houston’s roster is as follows: So what can you do to fix that because you’re looking lean heading into 2025?
Let’s see who will be back first.
Players with multi-year contracts
Jose Altuve
Altuve signed an extension with the club before the 2024 season. His contract runs from 2025 to 2029, when he will turn 39 years old. This enhancement has a value of $125 million and an AAV of $25 million.
jordan alvarez
Alvarez signed a six-year extension worth $115 million with the Astros before the start of the 2023 season, with the second year of arbitration. The contract expires in 2028 and will pay him $19,166,667 in AAV.
Josh Hader
Hader, who was acquired by the Astros during the 2023 offseason, signed a five-year contract worth $95 million, which at the time of his signing was the largest ever given to a relief pitcher. Hader’s AAV through the 2028 season is $19,000,000.
Christian Javier
Javier, who has been a breakout player with the Astros in recent years, signed a five-year extension with the club last year that will keep him with the Astros until 2028. The team gave him $64 million with an AAV of $12.8 million.
Lance McCullers
Since signing a five-year, $85 million extension in 2022 that kept him with the team through 2026, McCullers has pitched just 47.2 innings. McCullers, who earns $17 million a year, has a lot to accomplish in 2025.
other money
Jose Abreu
Along with Hader, Abreu was another big acquisition of the offseason, signing a large three-year contract worth a total of $58.5 million, but he ended up leaving the team. After the 2023 season in which he took the first big step in his career with the Chicago White Sox, his 2024 season with the Astros was completely terrible, leading to his release.
The former MVP will receive $19.5 million in AVV from the Astros despite not being with the team at any level.
Rafael Montero
After starting the year in the majors on a huge three-year contract worth $34.5 million, Montero finished the season in Triple-A. Montero, one of the keys to the Astros’ elite bullpen, signed a contract extension with the team before having a terrible 2024 season and pitching in just 41 games in the majors.
Montero will earn an AVV of $11.5 million while pitching in the minors and is expected to return to the majors in 2025.
Deferred money
Zack Greinke
Although it doesn’t count toward his active salary, the team still owes Greinke $12.5 million in deferred payments for 2022, 2023 and 2024.
Player entering arbitration
There is still arbitration time left, and the list of players likely to return in 2025 is very long. When a player enters arbitration, it means giving the team the numbers he thinks he’s worth. If the teams don’t agree on that number, it goes to court, which decides which of the two numbers the player will get next season.
Young players like Jeremy Pena, Hunter Brown, Chas McCormick, Luis Garcia, and Jake Myers are all expected to return to the team in 2025, but it remains to be seen how much they will get paid. So it’s unclear.
Sometimes it ends well, sometimes it ends badly. If there is a large discrepancy in numbers between a player and a team, it can affect the relationship between the two parties and make long-term contracts more difficult to work out.
Take Kyle Tucker, for example. In 2023, Tucker lost an arbitration hearing and ended up getting $5 million instead of the $7.5 million he had hoped for. After an explosive 2023 season, Tucker and the team agreed to a $12 million contract for the 2024 season. He has one year left in arbitration, and it’s unclear what will happen to his contract this offseason.
Currently, the Astros’ payroll costs for the 2025 season are expected to be approximately $237 million, with a lower limit of $241 million.
In the next article, we’ll take a look at where you should and shouldn’t spend your money this offseason.
